PSCFA Spring Championships Hosted by Pasadena City College

The Pt Loma Speech and Debate team just won First Place Sweepstakes honors at the PSCFA Spring Championship this past weekend in the 4 year University Division. This year end Championship tournament was hosted by Pasadena City College, and attracted 38 colleges and universities from California and Arizona, including USC, UCLA, CSU Long Beach, the Claremont colleges and Christian Universities such as Azusa Pacific, Biola, Cal Baptist and Vanguard. This was a very narrow two point victory over Second Place Vanguard University, meaning each team member made the difference in such a close contest. Not far behind in Third Place was Azusa Pacific. Vanguard and Azusa are coached by former Pt Loma products Rick Travis and Konrad Hack. Many of our other grads are teaching and coaching for competing programs as well. Each tournament is like an alumni meeting.

The specific awards and winners will be listed below but we are especially proud to announce that for the second year in a row (since the award was initiated) PLNU had the most team members named to the All Conference Academic Team, which requires that students maintain a grade point average of at least 3.75 The Pt Loma students so honored were:

Brenden Garrett

Andrew Hoag

Carissa Phillips

Shawna Songer

Scott Tuggle

Rachel Williams

Seven of the 10 Pt Loma debate teams advanced to the elimination rounds. Two of the others earned a sufficient win loss record to advance, but lost out on a tie breaker relating to speaker points. The debaters and the awards they won are listed below, including the individual speaker awards for debate. Forgive them if they are bit weary, the bus rolled into campus at nearly midnight last night.

Senior Debate:

Team Awards:

Troy Funk and Dominique Marino - Quarter Finalists

Chelsea Hettrick and Brad Lindenmayer - Quarter Finalists

Sarah Barnes and Brenden Garrett - Octa Finalists

Shannon Hutchison and Janae Parker - Octa Finalists

Scott Tuggle and Rachel Williams - Octa Finalists

Speaker Awards:

Troy Funk - 4th Place Speaker

Rachel Williams - 6th Place Speaker

Janae Parker - 7th Place Speaker

Shannon Hutchison - 10th Place Speaker

Junior Debate:

Team Awards:

Judah Michael and Ben Wagner - Octa Finalists

Zach Burton and Carissa Phillips - Octa Finalists

Speaker Awards:

Judah Michael - 3rd Place

Ben Wagner - 4th Place

Carissa Phillips - 12th Place

Shon Eizenhoefer - 19th place

Individual Events Awards:

Troy Funk - 5th Place Sr Impromptu, 2nd Place Sr. Extemp

Brenden Garrett - 2nd Place Jr. Rhetorical Criticism

Chelsea Hettrick - 3rd Place Nov Prose,

Andrew Hoag - Finalist Jr. Impromptu

Dominique Marino - Finalist Jr. Persuasion, Finalist Jr Extemp

Judah Michael - Finalist Jr. Impromptu

Jay Selnick - Finalist Sr. Impromptu,

Scott Tuggle - Finalist Jr. Extemp,

Ben Wagner - Finalist, Jr. Impromptu

Rachel Williams - Finalist Sr. Extemp, Finalist Jr. Informative

We have two remaining tournaments, both national championships. We have the honor of hosting Christian College Nationals on our campus over the upcoming break, from March 14 - 16.